Conventional warfare is a form of warfare conducted by using conventional military weapons and battlefield tactics between two or more states in open confrontation. The forces on each side are well-defined, and fight using weapons that primarily target the opposing army. It is normally fought using conventional weapons, and not with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

The general purpose of conventional warfare is to weaken or destroy the opponent's military force, thereby negating its ability to engage in conventional warfare. In forcing capitulation, however, one or both sides may eventually resort to unconventional warfare tactics.

History[link]

Formation of the state[link]

The state was first advocated by Plato, then found more acceptance in the consolidation of power under the Roman Catholic Church. European monarchs then gained power as the Catholic Church was stripped of temporal power and was replaced by the divine right of kings. In 1648, the powers of Europe signed the Treaty of Westphalia which ended the religious violence for purely political governance and outlook, signifying the birth of the modern 'state'.

Within this statist paradigm, only the state and its appointed representatives were allowed to bear arms and enter into war. In fact, war was only understood as a conflict between sovereign states. Kings strengthened this idea and gave it the force of law. Whereas previously any noble could start a war, the monarchs of Europe of necessity consolidated military power in response to the Napoleonic war.

The Clausewitzian paradigm[link]

Prussia was one country attempting to amass military power. Carl von Clausewitz, one of Prussia's officers, wrote On War, a work rooted solely in the world of the state. All other forms of intrastate conflict, such as rebellion, are not accounted for because, in theoretical terms, Clausewitz could not account for warfare before the state (However, near the end of his life, Clausewitz grew increasingly aware of the importance of non-state military actors. This is revealed in his conceptions of "the people in arms" which he noted arose from the same social and political sources as traditional inter-state warfare^[1]).

Practices such as raiding or blood feuds were then labeled criminal activities and stripped of legitimacy. This war paradigm reflected the view of most of the modernized world at the beginning of the 21st century, as verified by examination of the conventional armies of the time: large, high maintenance, technologically advanced armies designed to compete against similarly designed forces.

Clausewitz also forwarded the issue of casus belli. While previous wars were fought for social, religious, even cultural reasons, Clausewitz taught that war is merely "a continuation of politics by other means." It is a rational calculation where states fight for their interests (whether they are economic, security related, or otherwise) once normal discourse has broken down.

Prevalence[link]

The majority of modern wars have been conducted using the means of conventional warfare. Confirmed use of biological warfare by a nation state has not occurred since 1945, and chemical warfare has been used only a few times (the latest known confrontation in which it was utilized being the Iran-Iraq War). Nuclear warfare has only occurred once with the United States bombing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Decline[link]

The state and Clausewitzian principles peaked in the World Wars of the 20th century, but also laid the groundwork for their dilapidation due to nuclear proliferation and the manifestation of culturally aligned conflict. The nuclear bomb was the result of the state perfecting its quest to overthrow its competitive duplicates. Ironically, this development seems to have pushed conventional conflict waged by the state to the sidelines. Were two conventional armies to fight, the loser would have redress in its nuclear arsenal.

Thus, no two nuclear powers have yet fought a conventional war directly, with the exception of brief skirmishes between for example, China and Russia in the 1969 Sino-Soviet conflict and between India and Pakistan in the 1999 Kargil War.

Replacement[link]

Conventional warfare, waged by the state, has become something not worthy of a declaration of war. Instead, those capable of fighting underneath the nuclear umbrella (supranational terrorists, corporate mercenaries, ethnic militias, and so on.) have now come to dominate the majority of conflict in the post-modern era. These conflicts cannot be explained under the statist system.

Samuel Huntington has posited that the world in the early 21st century exists as a system of nine distinct "civilizations," instead of many sovereign states. These civilizations are delineated along cultural lines, for example, Western, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu and so on. In this way, cultures that have long been dominated by the West are reasserting themselves and looking to challenge the status quo. Thus, culture has replaced the state as the locus of war. This kind of civilizational war, in our time as in times long past, occurs where these cultures buffet up against one another. Some high-profile examples are the Pakistan/India conflict or the battles in the Sudan. This sort of war has defined the field since World War II.

These cultural forces will not contend with state-based armies in the traditional way. When faced with battalions of tanks, jets, and missiles, the cultural opponent dissolves away into the population. They benefit from the territorially constrained states, being able to move freely from one country to the next, while states must negotiate with other sovereign states. The state's spy networks are also severely limited by cultural factors.

See also[link]

Contrast:

• Asymmetric warfare
• Low-intensity operations
• Psychological warfare
• Unconventional warfare

Footnotes[link]

External links[link]

• "Changing Nature of Warfare". National Intelligence Council. 2004. http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2020_2004_05_25_intro.html. Retrieved January 30, 2006. 
• Stathis Kalyvas (2003). "The Sociology of Civil Wars: Warfare and Armed Groups". Armed Groups Project. http://www.armedgroups.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=26. Retrieved January 30, 2006. 

Jack Kevorkian
Jack Kevorkian at UCLA's Royce Hall, January 15, 2011.
Born	(1928-05-26)May 26, 1928 Pontiac, Michigan, U.S.
Died	June 3, 2011(2011-06-03) (aged 83) Royal Oak, Michigan, U.S.
Cause of death	Thrombosis
Nationality	American
Education	University of Michigan Medical School
Years active	1952–2011
Known for	Influencing euthanasia debate worldwide
Profession	Physician, painter, author, and musician
Institutions	Henry Ford Hospital University of Michigan Medical Center Saratoga General Hospital
Specialism	Euthanasia Medicine
Research	Euthanasia and Painless Death

Jacob "Jack" Kevorkian ( /kɨˈvɔrkiən/;^[1] May 26, 1928 – June 3, 2011^[2]), commonly known as "Dr. Death", was an American pathologist, euthanasia activist, painter, author, composer and instrumentalist. He is best known for publicly championing a terminal patient's right to die via physician-assisted suicide; he claimed to have assisted at least 130 patients to that end. He famously said, "dying is not a crime".^[3]

Beginning in 1999, Kevorkian served eight years of a 10-to-25-year prison sentence for second-degree murder. He was released on parole on June 1, 2007, on condition he would not offer suicide advice to any other person.^[4]

As an oil painter and a jazz musician, Kevorkian marketed limited quantities of his visual and musical artwork to the public.

Early life[link]

Kevorkian was born in Pontiac, Michigan to Armenian immigrants. His father Levon was born in the village of Passen, near Erzurum, and his mother Satenig was born in the village of Govdun, near Sivas.^[5] His father moved from Turkey in 1912 and made his way to Pontiac, where he found work at an automobile foundry. Satenig fled the Armenian Genocide of 1915, finding refuge with relatives in Paris, and eventually reuniting with her brother in Pontiac. Levon and Satenig met through the Armenian community in their city, where they married and began their family. The couple had a daughter, Margaret, in 1926, followed by son Jacob – who later earned the nickname "Jack" from an American teacher who misread the birth certificate^[6] — and, lastly, the third child, a daughter, Flora.^[7] Kevorkian, who taught himself German and Japanese,^[8] graduated from Pontiac Central High School with honors in 1945, at the age of 17. In 1952, he graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor.^[9][10][11] Kevorkian never married.^[12] He completed residency training in anatomical and clinical pathology and briefly conducted research on blood transfusion, but was unable to function effectively as a hospital pathologist. Kevorkian left the active practice of medicine and, for a time, was even homeless.^[13]

Career[link]

Over a period of decades, Kevorkian developed several controversial ideas related to death. In a 1959 journal article, Kevorkian wrote:

Senior doctors at the University of Michigan, Kevorkian's employer, opposed the proposal and Kevorkian chose to leave the University rather than give up advocating his ideas. Ultimately, Kevorkian gained little support for his plan. Kevorkian would return to the idea of using death row inmates for medical purposes after the Supreme Court's 1976 decision in Gregg v. Georgia re-instituted the death penalty. Kevorkian advocated harvesting the organs from inmates after the death penalty was carried out for transplant into sick patients. Kevorkian failed to gain the cooperation of prison officials.^[15]

As a pathologist at Pontiac General Hospital, Kevorkian experimented with transfusing blood from the recently deceased into live patients. He drew blood from corpses recently brought into the hospital and transferred it successfully into the bodies of hospital staff members. Kevorkian thought that the US military might be interested in using this technique to help wounded soldiers during a battle, but the Pentagon was not interested.^[15]

In the 1980s, Kevorkian wrote a series of articles for the German journal Medicine and Law that laid out his thinking on the ethics of euthanasia.^[9][16]

Kevorkian started advertising in Detroit newspapers in 1987 as a physician consultant for "death counseling". His first public assisted suicide was in 1990, of Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old woman diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1989. He was charged with murder, but charges were dropped on December 13, 1990 as there were, at that time, no laws in Michigan regarding assisted suicide.^[17] However, in 1991 the State of Michigan revoked Kevorkian's medical license and made it clear that given his actions, he was no longer permitted to practice medicine or to work with patients.^[18] Between 1990 and 1998, Kevorkian assisted in the deaths of 130 terminally ill people, according to his lawyer Geoffrey Fieger. In each of these cases, the individuals themselves allegedly took the final action which resulted in their own deaths. Kevorkian allegedly assisted only by attaching the individual to a euthanasia device that he devised and constructed. The individual then pushed a button which released the drugs or chemicals that would end his or her own life. Two deaths were assisted by means of a device which delivered the euthanizing drugs mechanically through an I.V. Kevorkian called it a "Thanatron" (death machine).^[19] Other people were assisted by a device which employed a gas mask fed by a canister of carbon monoxide which was called "Mercitron" (mercy machine).^[20]

Criticism and Kevorkian's response[link]

According to a report by the Detroit Free Press, 60% of the patients who committed suicide with Kevorkian's help were not terminally ill, and at least 13 had not complained of pain. The report further asserted that Kevorkian's counseling was too brief (with at least 19 patients dying less than 24 hours after first meeting Kevorkian) and lacked a psychiatric exam in at least 19 cases, 5 of which involved people with histories of depression, though Kevorkian was sometimes alerted that the patient was unhappy for reasons other than their medical condition. (In 1992, Kevorkian himself wrote that it is always necessary to consult a psychiatrist when performing assisted suicides because a person's "mental state is ... of paramount importance."^[22]) The report also stated that Kevorkian failed to refer at least 17 patients to a pain specialist after they complained of chronic pain, and sometimes failed to obtain a complete medical record for his patients, with at least three autopsies of suicides Kevorkian had assisted with showing the person who committed suicide to have no physical sign of disease. Rebecca Badger, a patient of Kevorkian's and a mentally troubled drug abuser, had been mistakenly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The report also stated that Janet Adkins, Kevorkian's first patient, had been chosen without Kevorkian ever speaking to her, only with her husband, and that when Kevorkian first met Adkins two days before her assisted suicide he "made no real effort to discover whether Ms. Adkins wished to end her life," as the Michigan Court of Appeals put it in a 1995 ruling upholding an order against Kevorkian's activity.^[22] According to The Economist: "Studies of those who sought out Dr. Kevorkian, however, suggest that though many had a worsening illness ... it was not usually terminal. Autopsies showed five people had no disease at all. ... Little over a third were in pain. Some presumably suffered from no more than hypochondria or depression."^[23]

In response, Kevorkian's attorney Geoffrey Fieger published an essay stating, "I've never met any doctor who lived by such exacting guidelines as Kevorkian ... he published them in an article for the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry in 1992. Last year he got a committee of doctors, the Physicians of Mercy, to lay down new guidelines, which he scrupulously follows."^[22] However, Fieger stated that Kevorkian found it difficult to follow his "exacting guidelines" due to "persecution and prosecution", adding "[H]e's proposed these guidelines saying this is what ought to be done. These are not to be done in times of war, and we're at war."^[22]

In a 2010 interview with Sanjay Gupta, Kevorkian stated an objection to the status of assisted suicide in Oregon, Washington, and Montana. Only in those three states is assisted suicide legal in the United States, and then only for terminally ill patients. To Gupta, Kevorkian stated, "What difference does it make if someone is terminal? We are all terminal."^[24] In his view, a patient did not have to be terminally ill to be assisted in committing suicide, but did need to be suffering. However, he also said in that same interview that he declined four out of every five assisted suicide requests, on the grounds that the patient needed more treatment or medical records had to be checked.^[25]

Art career[link]

Kevorkian was a jazz musician and composer. The Kevorkian Suite: A Very Still Life was a 1997 limited release CD of 5,000 copies from the 'Lucid Subjazz' label. It features Kevorkian on the flute and organ playing his own works with "The Morpheus Quintet". It was reviewed in Entertainment Weekly online as "weird" but "good natured".^[26] As of 1997, 1,400 units had been sold.^[26] Kevorkian wrote all the songs but one; the album was reviewed in jazzreview.com as "very much grooviness" except for one tune, with "stuff in between that's worthy of multiple spins."^[27]

He was also an oil painter. His work tended toward the grotesque; he sometimes painted with his own blood, and had created pictures such as one "of a child eating the flesh off a decomposing corpse."^[16] Of his known works, six were made available in the 1990s for print release. The Ariana Gallery in Royal Oak, Michigan is the exclusive distributor of Kevorkian's artwork. The original oil prints are not for release.^[28] Sludge metal band Acid Bath used his painting "For He is Raised" as the cover art for their 1996 album Paegan Terrorism Tactics.^[29]

In 2011, his paintings became the center of a legal entanglement between his sole heir and a Massachusetts museum.^[30]

Trials[link]

Kevorkian was tried four times for assisting suicides between May 1994 to June 1997. With the assistance of Fieger, Kevorkian was acquitted three times. The fourth trial ended in a mistrial.^[2] The trials helped Kevorkian gain public support for his cause. After Oakland County prosecutor Richard Thompson lost a primary election to a Republican challenger,^[31] Thompson attributed the loss in part to the declining public support for the prosecution of Kevorkian and its associated legal expenses.^[32]

Conviction and imprisonment[link]

On the November 22, 1998, broadcast of 60 Minutes, Kevorkian allowed the airing of a videotape he made on September 17, 1998, which depicted the voluntary euthanasia of Thomas Youk, 52, who was in the final stages of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. After Youk provided his fully informed consent (a sometimes complex legal determination made in this case by editorial consensus) on September 17, 1998, Kevorkian himself administered Thomas Youk a lethal injection. This was highly significant, as all of his earlier clients had reportedly completed the process themselves. During the videotape, Kevorkian dared the authorities to try to convict him or stop him from carrying out mercy killings. Youk's family described the lethal injection as humane, not murder.

On March 26, 1999, Kevorkian was charged with second-degree murder and the delivery of a controlled substance (administering the lethal injection to Thomas Youk).^[9] Because Kevorkian's license to practice medicine had been revoked eight years previously, he was not legally allowed to possess the controlled substance. As homicide law is relatively fixed and routine, this trial was markedly different from earlier ones that involved an area of law in flux (assisted suicide). Kevorkian discharged his attorneys and proceeded through the trial representing himself, a decision he later regretted.^[2] The judge ordered a criminal defense attorney to remain available at trial as standby counsel for information and advice. Inexperienced in law but persisting in his efforts to represent himself, Kevorkian encountered great difficulty in presenting his evidence and arguments. He was not able to call any witnesses to the stand as the judge did not deem the testimony of any of his witnesses relevant.^[33]

After a two day trial, the Michigan jury found Kevorkian guilty of second-degree homicide.^[2] Judge Jessica Cooper sentenced Kevorkian to serve 10–25 years in prison and told him:

"This is a court of law and you said you invited yourself here to take a final stand. But this trial was not an opportunity for a referendum. The law prohibiting euthanasia was specifically reviewed and clarified by the Michigan Supreme Court several years ago in a decision involving your very own cases, sir. So the charge here should come as no surprise to you. You invited yourself to the wrong forum. Well, we are a nation of laws, and we are a nation that tolerates differences of opinion because we have a civilized and a nonviolent way of resolving our conflicts that weighs the law and adheres to the law. We have the means and the methods to protest the laws with which we disagree. You can criticize the law, you can write or lecture about the law, you can speak to the media or petition the voters."

Kevorkian was sent to a prison in Coldwater, Michigan to serve his sentence.^[34] After his conviction (and subsequent losses on appeal) Kevorkian was denied parole repeatedly until 2007.^[35]

In an MSNBC interview aired on September 29, 2005, Kevorkian said that if he were granted parole, he would not resume directly helping people die and would restrict himself to campaigning to have the law changed. On December 22, 2005, Kevorkian was denied parole by a board on the count of 7–2 recommending not to give parole.^[36]

Reportedly terminally ill with Hepatitis C, which he contracted while doing research on blood transfusions,^[37] Kevorkian was expected to die within a year in May 2006. After applying for a pardon, parole, or commutation by the parole board and Governor Jennifer Granholm, he was paroled for good behavior on June 1, 2007. He had spent eight years and two and a half months in prison.^[38][39]

Kevorkian was on parole for two years, under the conditions that he not help anyone else die, or provide care for anyone older than 62 or disabled.^[40] Kevorkian said he would abstain from assisting any more terminal patients with death, and his role in the matter would strictly be to persuade states to change their laws on assisted suicide. He was also forbidden by the rules of his parole from commenting about assisted suicide.^[41][42]

Activities after his release from prison[link]

Jack Kevorkian answering questions at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with lawyer Mayer Morganroth (right) and former Foreign Minister of Armenia, Raffi Hovannisian (left)

Kevorkian gave a number of lectures upon his release. He lectured at universities such as the University of Florida,^[43] Nova Southeastern University,^[44] and the University of California, Los Angeles.^[45] His lectures have not been limited to the topic of euthanasia; he has also discussed such topics as tyranny, the criminal justice system, politics, the Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Armenian culture. He appeared on Fox News Channel's Your World with Neil Cavuto on September 2, 2009 to discuss health care reform.

On April 15 and 16, 2010, Kevorkian appeared on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360°,^[46] Anderson asked, "You are saying doctors play God all the time?" Kevorkian said: "Of course. Anytime you interfere with a natural process, you are playing God."^[47] Director Barry Levinson and actors Susan Sarandon and John Goodman, who appeared in You Don't Know Jack, a film based on Kevorkian's life, were interviewed alongside Kevorkian. Kevorkian was again interviewed by Cavuto on Your World on April 19, 2010 regarding the movie and Kevorkian's world view. You Don't Know Jack premiered April 24, 2010 on HBO.^[48] The film premiered April 14 at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City. Kevorkian walked the red carpet alongside Al Pacino, who portrayed him in the film.^[49] Pacino received Emmy and Golden Globe awards for his portrayal, and personally thanked Kevorkian, who was in the audience, upon receiving both of these awards. Kevorkian stated that both the film and Pacino's performance "brings tears to my eyes – and I lived through it".^[50]

2008 Congressional race[link]

On March 12, 2008, Kevorkian announced plans to run for United States Congress to represent Michigan's 9th congressional district against eight-term congressman Joe Knollenberg (R-Bloomfield Hills), Central Michigan University Professor Gary Peters (D-Bloomfield Township), Adam Goodman (L-Royal Oak) and Douglas Campbell. (G-Ferndale). Kevorkian ran as an independent and received 8,987 votes (2.6% of the vote).^[51]

Death[link]

Kevorkian had struggled with kidney problems for years.^[52] He was diagnosed with liver cancer, which "may have been caused by hepatitis C," according to his longtime friend Neal Nicol.^[53] Kevorkian was hospitalized on May 18, 2011, with kidney problems and pneumonia.^[2] Kevorkian's condition grew rapidly worse and he died from a thrombosis on June 3, 2011, eight days after his 83rd birthday, at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan.^[2] According to his attorney, Mayer Morganroth, there were no artificial attempts to keep him alive and his death was painless.^[53] Judge Thomas Jackson, who presided over Kevorkian's first murder trial in 1994, commented that he wanted to express sorrow at Kevorkian's death and that the 1994 case was brought under "a badly written law" aimed at Kevorkian, but he tried to give him "the best trial possible". Kevorkian was buried in White Chapel Memorial Park Cemetery Troy, Michigan.^[54]

Legacy[link]

Maria Silveira, a professor of internal medicine, said she became involved with palliative care partly because of the attention Kevorkian brought to the complex issue of unintended suffering, adding that he had a tremendous impact and fueled the public awareness of unintended suffering and the need to address it. "Dr. Jack Kevorkian didn’t seek out history, but he made history," she said.^[55] John Finn, medical director of palliative care at the Catholic^[56] St. John’s Hospital, said Kevorkian's methods were unorthodox and inappropriate.^[55] Geoffrey Fieger, Kevorkian's lawyer in the 1990s, said that Kevorkian revolutionized the concept of suicide by working to help people end their own suffering, because he believed physicians are responsible for alleviating the suffering of patients, even if that meant allowing patients to die.^[55] Derek Humphry, author of the suicide handbook, Final Exit, said Kevorkian was "too obsessed, too fanatical, in his interest in death and suicide to offer direction for the nation."^[57] Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan, said Kevorkian “was a major historical figure in modern medicine."^[55] The Catholic Church in Detroit said Kevorkian left behind a "deadly legacy" that denied scores of people their right to humane deaths.^[58] Philip Nitschke, founder and director of right-to-die organisation Exit International, said that Kevorkian "moved the debate forward in ways the rest of us can only imagine. He started at a time when it was hardly talked about and got people thinking about the issue. He paid one hell of a price, and that is one of the hallmarks of true heroism."^[59]

The epitaph on Kevorkian's tombstone reads, "He sacrificed himself for everyone's rights."^[60]

Publications[link]

Books

• Kevorkian, Jack (1959). The Story of Dissection. Philosophical Library. ISBN 978-1-258-07746-4. 
• Kevorkian, Jack (1960). Medical Research and the Death Penalty: A Dialogue. Vantage Books. ISBN 978-0-9602030-1-7. 
• Kevorkian, Jack (1966). Beyond Any Kind of God. Philosophical Library. ISBN 978-0-8022-0847-7. †
• Kevorkian, Jack (1978). Slimmericks and the Demi-Diet. Penumbra, Inc. ISBN 978-0-9602030-0-0. ††
• Kevorkian, Jack (1991). Prescription: Medicide, the Goodness of Planned Death. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-0-87975-872-1. 
• Kevorkian, Jack (2004). glimmerIQs. Penumbra, Inc. ISBN 978-0-9602030-7-9.  *
• Kevorkian, Jack (2005). Amendment IX: Our Cornucopia of Rights. Penumbra, Inc. ISBN 09602030IX. 
• Kevorkian, Jack (2010). When the People Bubble POPs. World Audience, Inc. ISBN 978-1-935444-91-6. 

† = Later heavily revised and incorporated into glimmerIQs

†† = Later incorporated in abridged form into glimmerIQs

* = Revised and distributed in 2009 by World Audience, Inc.

Selected journal articles

• Kevorkian, J. (1985). "Opinions on capital punishment, executions and medical science". Medicine and Law 4 (6): 515–533. PMID 4094526.  edit
• Kevorkian, J. (1987). "Capital punishment and organ retrieval". Canadian Medical Association Journal 136 (12): 1240. PMC 1492232. PMID 3580984. //www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1492232.  edit
• Kevorkian, J. (1988). "The last fearsome taboo: Medical aspects of planned death". Medicine and Law 7 (1): 1–14. PMID 3277000.  edit
• Kevorkian, J. (1989). "Marketing of human organs and tissues is justified and necessary". Medicine and Law 7. (6): 557–565. PMID 2495395.  edit

See also[link]

• God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, a collection of short fictional interviews written by Kurt Vonnegut
• You Don't Know Jack, a 2010 television film
• Canadian heavy metal band Anvil included a song named Doctor Kevorkian on their 1996 album Plugged in Permanent
• Canadian electro-punk band Crystal Castles makes a reference to Doctor Kevorkian or "Dr. Death" on the track "Love and Caring"

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jack Kevorkian

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jack Kevorkian

• Jack Kevorkian collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• "Papa" Prell Radio interview with Kevorkian. (MP3, 15 minutes). Prell archive at Radio Horror Hosts website.
• "Court TV Case Files — Trial coverage.". CourtTV.com. Archived from the original on February 8, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070208133712/http://www.courttv.com/casefiles/kevorkian/kevorkian.html. Retrieved August 3, 2010. 
• "The Kevorkian Verdict: The Life and Legacy of the Suicide Doctor" Frontline; PBS.org — with timeline and other info.
• Kevorkian's Art Work Frontline; PBS.org.
• "Unsung American-Armenian Hero Kevorkian Coming Home To Die". James Donahue website. tripod.com. May 2007. Archived from the original on June 8, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070608214510/http://perdurabo10.tripod.com/jamesdonahuesstories/id327.html. 
• Kevorkian on law and the constitution during an appearance at Harvard Law School (Harvard Law Record)
• Michigan Department of Corrections record for Jack Kevorkian
• 2008 Official Michigan General Candidate Listing. Michigan.org. November 25, 2008.
• Jack Kevorkian
• Jack Kevorkian to speak at UCLA, hosted by the UCLA Armenian Students' Association and the Armenian American Medical Society of California

James G. Rickards is an American lawyer, economist, and investment banker with 35 years of experience working in capital markets on Wall Street. He is a writer and is a regular commentator on finance. Rickards advised clients of an impending financial collapse, of a decline in the dollar and a sharp rise in the price of gold, all years in advance. He believes the United States needs to go back to a gold standard and was one of the first to promote this view.^{[citation needed]} Rickards is the author of The New York Times bestseller Currency Wars, published in 2011.

Biography[link]

Rickards graduated from Cape May High School in Cape May, New Jersey in 1969.^[1] He graduated from The Johns Hopkins University in 1973 with a B.A. degree with honors and in 1974, from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. with an M.A.^[2] in international economics. He received his Juris Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and an LL.M in taxation from New York University School of Law.^[3]

In 1981, Rickards was involved in the Iran hostage crisis.^[4] As general counsel for the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM),^[5][6] he was the principal negotiator in the 1998 bailout of LTCM^[7] by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Rickards worked on Wall Street for 35 years.^[8] In 2001, he began using his financial expertise to aid the U.S. national security community and the U.S. Department of Defense.^[9] From 2002 to 2006, he advised clients of an impending financial collapse, of a decline in the dollar and of a sharp rise in the price of gold, years before any of these events took place.^[10]

Rickards is now the senior managing director for market intelligence at Omnis, Inc.,^[7] a consulting firm.^[3] On March 24, 2009, Rickards presented his view at a symposium at Johns Hopkins, that the U.S. dollar is vulnerable to attack from foreign governments through accumulation of gold and establishment of a new global currency.^[11] The same week, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, called for a new currency to be introduced and operated by the International Monetary Fund to replace the dollar as the basic unit of international commerce.^[11]

On September 10, 2009, Rickards testified before the U.S. House of Representatives about the risks of financial modeling, VaR, and the 2008 financial crisis.^[12]

On January 29, 2012, on Bob Brinker's radio program, Rickards stated his belief that the U.S. has been in a depression since 2007. He backed this assertion by pointing out the existence of a major component of previously seen U.S. depressions, the prolonged high rate of unemployment.

Rickards lives in Darien, Connecticut, where he is on the Republican Town Committee.^[13]

Gold standard[link]

Rickards was one of the first to say that the United States should return to a gold standard, which would be more stable^[14] than fiat money. Rickards believes that it is inevitable that the U.S. will return to a gold standard and says the question is whether the process of returning to the gold standard will be a smooth process with public debate, congressional hearings, commissions and government announcements that will enable markets to adjust or if it will be handled in a chaotic fashion with collateral damage, civil unrest and some sort of domestic military operations.^[14] Rickards says currently, the U.S. is following the chaotic path.^[14] He says that a return to a gold standard would enable people to have confidence in the currency because they would know they could convert their paper money to gold at any time and the government would make payment and this would keep the system honest.^[14] Rickards believes that on an open market, the price of gold would be around $7,000 an ounce.^[14] He says the target price is between $5,000 and $10,000 per troy ounce in current U.S. dollars.^[15]

Quotes[link]

Rickards writes and speaks on geopolitics, national security, and global capital markets.^[9] He has written op-ed columns for the Financial Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post and has been interviewed in The Wall Street Journal and on CNBC, Fox News, CNN, NPR, Bloomberg, C-Span, and is a "resident expert" at King World News.^[9]

On the LTCM bailout and the late-2000s financial crisis:
"What strikes me now, looking back, is how nothing was changed: no lessons were applied. Even though the lessons were obvious, in 1998. […] Regulatory oversight needed to be ramped up […] The government did just the opposite. Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, so that banks could become hedge funds. The U.S., in effect stared near-catastrophe in the eye, with LTCM, and decided to double down."^[8]

On national security:
"A lot of my clients are in the national security area, so I work a lot with the [U.S.] Department of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence and others. We obviously spend a lot of time thinking about threats to national security. And I have spent a lot of time in the counter-terrorism field and terrorist finance and other aspects of that. And if I had to rank threats to national security, I would rank Ben Bernanke above Osama bin Laden. […] Ben Bernanke is not on the run. He's sitting in a very high office but he's actually a greater threat because of what he is doing to destroy the [U.S.] dollar."^[14][16]

On the Federal Reserve:
"I think there's a huge credibility problem to begin with. Here's the Federal Reserve that has done nothing right as far back as I can recall. They missed the tech bubble, they missed the housing bubble, they kept interest rates too low for too long and the [financial] crisis, they underestimated the severity of it. When the crisis hit, they had no idea it was going to get that bad. Then they over-reacted by giving too much money away on no conditions whatsoever. And even to this day, they continue to believe the economy is getting better."^[14]

Publications[link]

Rickards' first book, Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis, was published on November 10, 2011 by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Group.^[17] In it, Rickards argues that currency wars are not just an economic or monetary concern, but a national security concern. He maintains that the United States is facing serious threats to its national security, from clandestine gold purchases by China to the hidden agendas of sovereign wealth funds and that greater than any single threat is the very real danger of the collapse of the dollar itself. Rickards explains that the Federal Reserve is involved in what he calls "the greatest gamble in the history of finance," via a sustained effort to stimulate the economy by printing money on a trillion-dollar scale.

Selected articles

• James G. Rickards, "A Mountain, Overlooked" The Washington Post (October 2, 2008). Retrieved May 16, 2011
• Charles Duelfer and Jim Rickards, "Financial Time Bombs" The New York Times (December 20, 2008). Retrieved May 16, 2011
• James Rickards, "How markets attacked the Greek piñata" The Financial Times (February 11, 2010). Retrieved May 16, 2011 (Registration required)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Lori Ann LaRocco, Interview with Jim Rickards CNBC (January 13, 2011). Retrieved May 14, 2011
• Ron Hera, "Interview: Jim Rickards on Inflation and Currency Wars" Financial Sense (February 4, 2011). Retrieved May 14, 2011
• Jim Rickards - "Just like the 1930s" YouTube. (March 19, 2011). Retrieved May 14, 2011
• "Jim Rickards on Quantitative Easing… Currency War… Inflation… Political Instability" Fiat Collapse blog, with video link to Rickards on Fox News (January 29, 2011). Retrieved May 14, 2011
• Currency Wars on Amazon
• Currency Wars on Barnes and Noble